Place, community education, gender and child mortality in Northeast India

Abstract

This article examines the relevance of socio-cultural and environmental factors in explaining child mortality in Northeast India, considered to be the most inaccessible region in the country. Using data from the Indian National Family Health Survey, we provide evidence that lack of hygiene in the household and poor women’s engagement in physically demanding agriculture based work contributes to higher risk of child mortality. Unlike in other parts of India, female children have an edge over boys in childhood survival and living with paternal grandmother tends to lower the risk of child death in the first five years of life. Community education is found as the dominant factor outside the household to have a significant effect on child mortality.